Publication: Seychelles Public Expenditure Review: Enhanced Fiscal Buffers for More Productive and Resilient Investments
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2025-02-12
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2025-02-12
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The PER analysis highlights priority policy actions to increase fiscal space and improve resilience to economic shocks and climate risks through human and physical capital investments. Chapter 1 focuses on Seychelles’ recent fiscal performance and examines trends in its public finances. Chapter 2 explores ways to counter the increasing threat of economic volatility and the negative impact of climate change. Chapter 3 examines the policy and institutional framework for managing public sector compensation, which will be vital to reverse an ongoing trend toward greater budget rigidity. Chapters 4 and 5 analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending in the critically important health and education sectors, respectively. The report concludes with proposed reforms based on two key criteria: (i) the amount of fiscal savings or gains generated and (ii) the projected impact on social and economic outcomes.
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“World Bank. 2025. Seychelles Public Expenditure Review: Enhanced Fiscal Buffers for More Productive and Resilient Investments. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42804 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Seychelles - Public Expenditure Review(World Bank, 2009-06-25)In 2008, after many years of unsustainable fiscal policy and a distorted and overvalued foreign exchange regime, the Government of Seychelles embarked upon a bold economic reform program. This program aims to put the economy on a path toward macroeconomic stability, liberalize the economy and to allow the private sector to take over from the state as the driving force in the economy. Seychelles, a small open, middle-income island state with relatively low incidence of poverty and near full employment, faced acute economic difficulties in 2008 as a result of past economic management exacerbated by the rising global oil and food prices and the downturn in the global economy. This resulted in missed debt-service payments and the subsequent downgrading of its credit rating by standard and poor's. Faced with current debt service difficulties and a historically poor credit track record, the authorities responded quickly by adopting a comprehensive reform program supported by a second year stand by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and commencing negotiations with Paris club and other private and official creditors for debt restructuring. The government has embarked upon a comprehensive reform strategy aimed at restoring internal and external balances with the assistance of the international financial institutions and development partners. The reform program includes: (i) the complete liberalization of the exchange rate regime and float of the currency (which was introduced in November 2008); and (ii) tightened fiscal policy, including improved targeting of the comprehensive social safety net and a privatization program to deal with the many state-owned enterprises. The focus of the public expenditure review (PER) reflects the fact that revisiting the role and functions of government lie at the heart of the economic reforms that need to take place in the next two years. This chapter provides a survey of recent developments, medium-term macroeconomic developments and their fiscal policy implications. Chapter two examines public expenditure trends and budget management issues. Chapters three, four, and five examine civil service reform, health care, and education issues respectively.Publication Seychelles - Selected Issues : Social Protection, Labor Market and Public Enterprise Reforms - Public Expenditure Review 2(World Bank, 2011-03-01)Until 2008, Seychelles pursued a state-led economic model of self sufficiency which ultimately proved unsustainable. In 2008, precipitated by rising global commodity prices, Seychelles entered a balance of payments and debt crisis, as international reserves were virtually depleted and external debt service payments were missed. The Government of Seychelles responded quickly by floating the rupee and liberalizing the foreign exchange regime, and agreeing a program with the International Monetary Fund under a 2 year stand-by agreement in November 2008. Although the liberalization of the exchange rate in November 2008 led to initial inflation rates in excess of 60 percent, the relative prices shock was quickly absorbed. Annual inflation fell from a high of positive 63.3 percent in December 2008 to negative 1.0 in August 2010. As the price and foreign exchange controls were lifted, the informal market in foreign currency quickly disappeared. This Public Expenditure Review (PER) also provided the Bank with an analytical basis to inform development policy lending in 2010. The specific objectives of the review are to: (i) provide an update on the macroeconomic stabilization efforts and changes to the fiscal policy for medium term debt sustainability and a more efficient and affordable public sector; (ii) analyze key public enterprise reform issues, including a review of the recently introduced legal and institutional changes to improve governance and oversight of the sector; and (iii) review the performance of the social security and labor market and an assessment of the ability of the private sector to absorb employees being retrenched as a result of the civil service reforms.Publication Zambia - Public Expenditure Review : Public Expenditure, Growth and Poverty - A Synthesis(Washington, DC, 2001-12)At the heart of the growth problem, the persistence of poverty, and issues of policy reform in Zambia is the public sector reform program. The best practice in public sector reform identifies three areas in which governments can improve their performance and their impact on the economy and poor: 1) macroeconomic discipline (the satabilization problem); 2) strategic priority setting (the allocation problem); and 3) efficient public-service delivery (the execution problem). Zambia's problem appears to be in all three areas. In particular, the aggregate performance, allocation, and execution of the budget are vital to the success of Zambia's public sector reform program. All three areas, particularly the allocation and execution issues, as they apply to public expenditure are the subject matter of the present public expenditure review (PER).Publication Pakistan - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa : Public Expenditure Review(Washington, DC, 2013-02)Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is one of the least-developed and crisis-prone provinces in Pakistan. Located in far north of the country, the province covers 10 percent of the total land area and is a home to 13 percent of the country's population spread over seven administrative districts. Majority of the population (83 percent) is rural, averaging 7.6 members per household-well above the national average of 6.6. The literacy rate remains low at 49 percent with more than half of population having no access to tap water while unemployment runs at 8.5 percent. KP's relative underperformance is primarily due to low levels of growth, socio-economic underdevelopment and lack of public services compared to other provinces of Pakistan. Cognizant of the challenges to growth in KP and acting upon the assessment of Pakistan Government's Post-Crisis Needs Assessment (PCNA) of the region in October 2010, the donors agreed on a harmonized approach to meet the short- and medium-term social and economic needs of KP, including the establishment of a Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF). This Public Expenditure Review (PER) of KP was undertaken in partnership with the government of KP and is one of the important outcomes of PCNA funded by the MDTF. The report on Operationalization of Post Crisis Needs Assessment (OPCNA) highlighted the need for strengthening KP's public financial management (PFM) as fundamental to improving public services and therefore the quality of life in KP. The report acknowledges the strong government ownership of reform initiatives which are taken with a view of strengthening all aspects of public finances. KP adopted a comprehensive fiscal reform program in 2001-02 based on four pillars, namely: 1) enhancing resources; 2) strengthening ex-ante and ex-post PFM reforms; 3) fiscal decentralization; and 4) instituting an output-based accountability mechanism.Publication Nicaragua - Public Expenditure Review : Improving the Poverty Focus of Public Spending(Washington, DC, 2001-12-07)This Public Expenditure Review has two broad objectives. The first is to analyze the pattern and evolution of public expenditures in Nicaragua with a view toward assessing their consistency with the priorities expressed in the recent Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), as well as recommending ways to improve their poverty reducing impact. The PRSP puts heavy emphasis on the social sectors and the rural sectors: projects in these sectors account for 80 percent of the total portfolio of poverty reducing projects. Accordingly, the sector reviews in this report mainly focus on these two sectors plus transport, which has the single largest sector investment program. Municipal finances are not covered for lack of adequate information. The second objective of the PER is to diagnose Nicaragua's institutional capacity to implement the poverty reduction programs to be defined in the PRSP and recommend measures for raising that capacity. The Joint Staff Assessment of the Interim and full PRSP point toward the need to proioritize further the poverty reducing projects and programs envisaged by the government. Such a prioritization is likely to require a significant reallocation of public resources that could strain the limited capacity of the public sector's planning and budgeting framework. As part of this institutional diagnosis, the PER also evaluates the tracking mechanism to monitor the use of HIPC funds, and recommends measures for strengthening it.
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